Offerings
I’ve always admired people who could make handmade gifts.
This summer, when I was missing Newfoundland and the friends I have there, I got a package in the mail. A whole group of my friends had contributed something to the contents, and many of the gifts it contained—crocheted dishtowels, hand-made facemasks, a mini string of bunting, an original watercolour—had been made by the giver’s own hands. In this year of distance and separation, my friends made me feel that I was with them, through these things made just for me.
I spent nearly five decades believing that I couldn’t make that kind of offering. I’d never learned to craft, and I thought I never would. Because I’m not dexterous. Because following visual sequences is difficult for me. Because I’m impatient, and easily frustrated.
Not my thing, I told myself.
But in 2018, Larry and I spent the winter in Dawson, Yukon. Larry was writer-in-residence at the Berton House, and had been to the community before, and—as always—he’d made some good friends. But I was eager to make my own connections in the community, and so when I saw a flyer for an embroidery workshop, I decided to sign up.
The instructor was lovely and so were the participants—but I found the stitching itself almost painful—and not just because I kept poking needles into my fingertips. It was an exercise in discovering that all the unflattering things I’d believed about my potential abilities, were actually true. Yes, I was terribly clumsy—far more than anyone else. I also took much longer to understand the way to make a stitch than any of my fellow new stitchers. And just when I would think I’d got the hang of something, having stitched a sequence of six in a row, on the seventh stitch the entire system of looping would leave my head completely, and the utterly kind and competent young woman who sat beside me (who was not the instructor, but just another beginning stitcher) would explain, with supernatural patience, how to start all over again. It was so hard not to get up and leave, to continue working through my throbbing embarrassment, and then, to convince myself to come back to the next class. But I wanted to sit with those other women. And I did want to learn. And…well you know the old saying: Anything worth doing is worth doing badly if you’ve already put on your snowpants and damn balaclava and come out in the dark at -40 C.
Eventually, when others had gone on to decorative embellishments,
I finally managed this.
And then this.
And I learned something which (yes, yes) I should have already have known: that I could learn to make—if I had the right encouragement, and if I wanted to do it badly enough. But it would take time, lots and lots of it—not just because it was new, but because I really did have to learn more slowly. And I discovered something else: I loved to embroider. For all the reasons that I thought I might hate to craft. The fussy precision. The painstaking progress. The absolute concentration required.
Three years of practice later, I’m making gifts for people. Not a lot of people. Not a lot of gifts. (See above, re: rate of progress.) But while I’m making something for someone, I’m thinking of them with every stitch. In the way that others have thought of me.
In his latest book, The Practice, Seth Godin asserts that withholding your art (out of fear of creating it, or because you perceive that it’s imperfect) is selfish. That to be generous, you must “ship” your art to its audience.
“You can produce more than you know if you are intent on doing it for someone else.”
These days, I’m rewriting a significant piece of my novel. When I’m finished this section, I’ve told my friend that I’d like her to read it. I’ve set myself a deadline: February 14th. So I can send it like a Valentine.
Recently, I got an email from a reader I’ve never met. It said that she loved my book of stories so much that she checks regularly to see when my next book is coming out. I printed that message and posted it beside my desk, so I see it every day when I sit down to write.
Because my novel, just like a piece of embroidery, is a gift. Something I make with my hands, so that readers can hold it in theirs. For some, it will be special. Something they love, at least for the time that it takes them to read it. And maybe, for a few readers, it will mean something more. They’ll feel what readers do for our most favourite books: that they were made just for us.